Because the size of the company was growing above and beyond the feasibility of a workgroup, a internal domain needed to be created.

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When I first joined the company, we had one office and about 25 users each with his own computer. My primary role was to be the 'IT guy' of the company with a few other secondary roles. However, after just a year, the company was growing fast and a continued use of a workgroup network was becoming cumbersome and time consuming; a move to a true domain was in order.

The planning stage of the project involved taking a complete inventory of the current IT infrastructure and luckily for us, the majority of it was suitable for a domain deployment. For example, because we were a sales company, we had a substantial VoIP deployment that was hosted but with the networking hardware on site. This meant we could use that infrastructure (a Cisco router with multiple Cisco switches) with a different subnet and significantly cut down on hardware costs. There were some challenges though; a handful of computers with running incompatible hardware and software which included Windows XP, Windows 7 Home, and a Mac or two. While technically only the 7 Home was incompatible, I felt that starting with a foundation with as little variables as possible was for the best. Finally, I needed to plan the organization of the domain itself. With multiple departments, offices, buildings, and an upcoming location in Florida, there was a lot to think about. I won't bore with my thought process but I planned my OUs as best as I could allowing for future changes.

The deployment stage started in my test lab. Using Server 2012R2, I created our domain controller with a .local domain as well as the required DNS server and DCHP server; all on the same server hardware. Windows Server 2012 made the whole process ridiculously easy; in as little as an hour, the whole structure was setup and ready to be connected. Unfortunately, I still needed to add all my current users to the tree and even using a template object, it took some time. Next, using the money we saved from utilizing the existing hardware, I upgraded the incompatible computers so that everyone was on either a Windows 7 Pro or Enterprise OS. Finally came time to transition workstations to the new domain. For this, I created a simple script that did the work for me; I had users execute this script which essentially scheduled a task for that night the connected the computer to the domain.

After the final workstations were transitioned, it was time to do an end-of-project evaluation and adjust accordingly. Some OUs needed to be adjusted including the GPOs assigned to them, some users had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new environment, and file shares had to be moved to a file server for continued accessed (being they were on an individuals' computers initially). All in all, it was not a challenging project because I planned each stage.